Our Cosmos idea may be all wrong, Universe may be infinite loop

Washington: New findings appear
to support the hypothesis of a ‘closed universe’ which bears some
unconventional space-time implications, although the majority of science does
not currently support this model.

A new study published Monday in the Nature Astronomy
journal appears to support the hypothesis that our universe is curved and not
flat, as a majority of science believes.

If this is the case, then traveling
in one direction will eventually bring you back to the point
where you began, what scientists call a ‘closed universe’. However, most
scientists currently support the theory of the ‘flat universe’ which
suggests that the known universe expands in all directions and travelling in
one direction will either bring you to the end of the universe or to infinity
(there are different hypotheses). Earlier results from the Planck
spacecraft mission appear
to support the flat universe theory.

The study,
entitled “Planck evidence for a closed Universe and a possible crisis for
cosmology” deals with the ‘cosmic microwave background’ (CMB), the
electromagnetic signature of the Big Bang that gave birth to our universe at
the beginning.

According to the study, authored by a team of researchers from
the UK and Italy, the CMB reveals significantly
more ‘gravitational lensing’ than was expected, suggesting that
gravity is bending the microwaves much more than today’s physics can explain.

“The assumption of a flat Universe could […] mask a cosmological
crisis where disparate observed properties of the Universe appear to be
mutually inconsistent,” the study introduction observes.

The scientists who wrote the report, however, retain a dose of
healthy skepticism regarding their own findings.

“I don’t want to say that I believe in a closed
universe,” study co-author Alessandro Melchiorri of Sapienza University in
Rome told Live Science. “I’m a little bit more neutral. I’d say, let’s
wait on the data and what the new data will say. What I believe is that there’s
a discrepancy now, that we have to be careful and try to find what is producing
this discrepancy.”

Earlier measurements conducted by the Planck spacecraft suggested that the Universe was flat, with what has been claimed to be 99.8 percent accuracy. Researchers note, however, that “future measurements are needed to clarify whether the observed discordances are due to undetected systematics, or to new physics or simply are a statistical fluctuation.”